Debates

Fletch_Talon · Jul 10, 2008 7:16 AM

ratchet wrote:

I dont mind some books, but reading should not be forced. People wil naturally read anyway (except for me, I wont).
But my point wasn't "i should read or not" it was That reading should not be forced and i think we all agree on that.
I've read Eragon and happy potter and have found them extremely boring

i dont agree with that to be honest, you go to school to learn, part of learning especially English lessons revolves around reading, its not like theyre telling you to read every day for the rest of your life, in high school the most i remember having to read was 2 books in a year, thats far from torture, they were very rarely books i enjoyed either

you might as well say that they shouldnt force you to write essays, answer questions, work in groups, speak in front of the class (as much as i hate it)

there are reasons for pretty much everything you do in school, just because you dont like doing them doesnt mean theyre wrong

another example is what you said about homework, now i hate homework as much as everyone else, and ill be honest, i very rarely did it myself, but its another thing that is there for a reason, its very easy to just turn up to school, do the work you have to, then go home and do whatever you want, but most people dont learn much that way, and as unfortunate as it is, schools, like most of the world work on a system where the majority define how everything works

in saying that i do believe homework given at school can often be excessive, especially when assignments are also given to be done at home, it results in a highly stressful environment, some people are organised enough to deal with it, others arent, and its really not fair

Phoenix_Flyer · Jul 10, 2008 8:32 AM

I personally love reading, I loved both the Harry Potter books and The Inheritance books (BTW Brisingr comes out soon! XD) as well as some others such as The Power Of Five Trilogy and the Redwall Series. I'm like you Fletch, I prefer to read fantasy books! As for ratchet, deal with reading, whatever job you have to do in the future, you have to read in some shape or form. And as for an advanced vocabulary, thats watch employer look for, an articulate person. Whats a little reading when it can help you to get Â£30,000 a year (whatever the currency is in Australia, dunno what the equivelent is) instead of Â£10,000?

Fletch_Talon · Jul 10, 2008 9:18 AM

Phoenix_Flyer wrote:

I personally love reading, I loved both the Harry Potter books and The Inheritance books (BTW Brisingr comes out soon! XD) as well as some others such as The Power Of Five Trilogy and the Redwall Series. I'm like you Fletch, I prefer to read fantasy books! As for ratchet, deal with reading, whatever job you have to do in the future, you have to read in some shape or form. And as for an advanced vocabulary, thats watch employer look for, an articulate person. Whats a little reading when it can help you to get Â£30,000 a year (whatever the currency is in Australia, dunno what the equivelent is) instead of Â£10,000?

EULALIAHHHH! big_smile (though honestly im more of an otter fan, but a wooperyhoo isnt as recognisable)

also i heard about Brisingr and also that its no longer going to be a trilogy, which is great news, the longer it goes for, the more i get to read

i like talking about books, i reckon ill start a thread about it if one doesnt already exist

ratchet · Jul 10, 2008 9:20 AM

Pheonix_Flyer: Dude, I think those people who hire people due to there form f speech are idiots, so if everyone does that, they're idoiots. BTW, we normally only judge people on that because schooling teaches us that.
Besides, i would read for work, something that i want to learn, but not fiction for school. School should not force you to read because reading is recreational.

you might as well say that they shouldnt force you to write essays, answer questions, work in groups, speak in front of the class (as much as i hate it)

Actually, if it were up to me, i'd make School optional, and make a system where its much easier for an uneducated person to take a cource and get a job! And no, i'm not saying the education system sucks because "I Dont like to do things at school".

there are reasons for pretty much everything you do in school, just because you dont like doing them doesnt mean theyre wrong

Argh, you treat me like an 8 year old! (dont worry, i'm not offended).
I'm not saying we should abolish the education system, just revise it.

but most people dont learn much that way, and as unfortunate as it is, schools, like most of the world work on a system where the majority define how everything works

Well theres one thing that the education system needs to revise for a start.
But yeah, homework hardly helps me, i never ever did my homework in primary school yet i got Excellent marks and beat everyone else in the class (who did do their homework). In high school, i never do my maths homework ( i copy from BOB) and i also get top of the class, and I'm in the top maths class full of asians (Sorry if i offend any asians, but seriously, you are normally better at maths)

Now just a reminder to everyone:
DO NOT SAY THINGS LIKE "YOU NEED SCHOOL TO GET A JOB" BECAUSE I KNOW THAT, IN MY OPINION, YOU SHOULDN'T NEED TO GO TO SCHOOL FOR 13 YEARS TO GET A JOB, I BELIEVE THE WHOLE EDUCATION SYSTEM IS WRONG, NOT JUST PRIMARY AND HIGH SCHOOL.

DarkMaster · Jul 10, 2008 9:22 AM

I want to start a new debate topic here it is : Kids should be older than 15 to start driving cars, there's just to many car accidents and because of there carelessness they nearly run over younger kids and also make to much noise with there eggzorst pipe and they should wait until they should wait until there older to drive

(this was from NZ you can start driving at 15 in NZ)
(sorry can't spell very well)

Fletch_Talon · Jul 10, 2008 10:25 AM

i wasnt trying to treat you like an 8 year old, i think everyone regardless of age would disagree with some things just because they dont like them, its a human thing

the problem with your idea of abolishing school altogether is this, school is not just something you do to get a job roughly its something like this (this is an australian format, i dunno about america, it could also be out of date since its been a while)

preschool - grade 2
tends to be a lot of basic reading writing and maths skills, a lot of creative stuff to encourage students who are artistic, and it is also there to teach children social skills, making friends etc.
without these years, the population would be very likely become antisocial and lacking in basic maths as well as have trouble reading and writing

grade 3 - grade 4/5
a bit more focus on your maths and english, this is when we started things like multiplication, division, long division, we also had weekly spelling words to learn and were given different methods of remembering how to spell difficult words, i recall too that we were encouraged to fill in a reading journal which funnily enough i really hated, i managed to fill it in with phantom comics because i had yet to discover a genre of novel that appealed to me
without these grade the population would be illiterate and not understand how to get the price of 5 lollipops at 80 cents each... unless they add 80 to itself 5 times... so who needs multiplication

grade 5 - grade 7
a lot of it is about preparing you for highschool, the work gets harder and requires a little bit of research and study, you get more assignments alongside the usual end of term tests because these are the 2 ways that highschool tends to assess you
theyre there to prepare you for highschool, they also further expand on the usual subjects, so you have maths thats a little more complex and you learn how to properly construct sentences paragraphs and essays (please dont base my teacher's success on my posts, i dont really put as much effort into punctuation and grammar as i should)

grade 8 - grade 9
the transition from primary school into secondary, at my school, grade 8 was were everyone tried every subject for a set period, in grade 9 we could choose from the subjects in grade 8 to give us a more stable syllabus, examples of our choices include [manual arts or home economics] [physical health and education or a second language] [visual art or media studies or music or drama]
these years are again getting you ready for the years where you really have to concentrate

grade 10
you can carry on the subjects from grade 9 and after this year (though its changed now, i could have left if i had wanted to, however my options would be greatly limited)
here is where you get your final preparation for grades 11 and 12 and a lot of focus is placed on the information that youll need for the subjects and the skills youll need for the assignments

grade 11 - grade 12
pure hell, everything you thought you knew about school goes out the window, if you havnt learnt to be organised by know, youre in trouble, the amount of words required in assignments increases by a large portion, but why?
these grades are here to prepare you for university, you do the same things only university is even harder, and you dont get as much help from teachers (at least not without asking)

here are the problems i have with your opinions
your idea of having a system where uneducated people can get jobs easier repulses me, the worlds full of morons now i shudder to think what it would be like if people didnt have to get even a basic education to suceed in life
if people dont have to go to school for 13 years before getting a job, what are they going to do? cuz youre not even allowed to work for the first 15/16 years
where do you suggest people learn maths and english if they dont go to school?
every job that exists requires at the least about a grade 7 education if not higher, if you clean for a living you need to have a good knowledge of ratios for mixing chemicals, if you work at the checkout then i sure hope you know how to add subtract multiply divide etc.
the reason you are as good with maths and english as you are now, is because youve been learning them for 7 or 8 years now, your solution im guessing must be to spend some time learning the essentials and then doing whatever you want, unfortunately the world and more importantly the human mind does not work that way, you could learn how to add and subtract when youre 7 but if you dont keep finding situations where it needs to be used then you will foget how

and trust me ratchet, i got excellents in just about everything until i got to grade 11, at that point its a whole new ball game, homework suddenly becomes very important, i managed to get average to slightly above average marks, sure, you could be a rare case like me, or do even better and get great marks without doing homework (though id have to question the difficulty of the current NSW school system compared to the QLD one when i was in grade 11/12) but do you really wanna risk it?

Fletch_Talon · Jul 10, 2008 10:32 AM

DarkMaster wrote:

I want to start a new debate topic here it is : Kids should be older than 15 to start driving cars, there's just to many car accidents and because of there carelessness they nearly run over younger kids and also make to much noise with there eggzorst pipe and they should wait until they should wait until there older to drive
(this was from NZ you can start driving at 15 in NZ)
(sorry can't spell very well)

whilst i agree the driving age should be pushed up, i dont harbour any false beliefs that that would solve the problem, people who act that way at 15 are often just as likely to act that way at 25, 30, 50

Doppelgangergang · Jul 10, 2008 1:52 PM

I'm sorry, but I can't comment on ratchet and Fletch's situation. It's a different system here. sad

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Fletch_Talon wrote:

DarkMaster wrote:
I want to start a new debate topic here it is : Kids should be older than 15 to start driving cars, there's just to many car accidents and because of there carelessness they nearly run over younger kids and also make to much noise with there eggzorst pipe and they should wait until they should wait until there older to drive
(this was from NZ you can start driving at 15 in NZ)
(sorry can't spell very well)
whilst i agree the driving age should be pushed up, i dont harbour any false beliefs that that would solve the problem, people who act that way at 15 are often just as likely to act that way at 25, 30, 50

A psychology test can and will root out any problem people from having a license.

LoneKnight · Jul 10, 2008 9:12 PM

The reason the driving age needs to be set higher is not to punish kids, but to let the reach a higher level of maturity before getting behind the wheel of a machine that can kill others. Some kids might not even be that responsible once they hit that age level, but it's smarter than giving keys to a young kid.

Doppelgangergang · Jul 10, 2008 9:13 PM

LoneKnight wrote:

The reason the driving age needs to be set higher is not to punish kids, but to let the reach a higher level of maturity before getting behind the wheel of a machine that can kill others. Some kids might not even be that responsible once they hit that age level, but it's smarter than giving keys to a young kid.

Which is the purpose of what I am saying.

A psychology test can root out misfits.

bmah · Jul 11, 2008 5:17 AM

Also, the statistics that show the age demographics of car crashes is very strong evidence that kids shouldn't drive at a really young age. People at the ages of around 16-18 have the highest number of crashes amongst other age groups, although the number of crashes doesn't decrease significantly until around the age of 40 or so. The crashes just keep on coming.

Fletch_Talon · Jul 11, 2008 5:46 AM

there is a device thats been created that attaches to the car and monitors speed/breaking/etc. it then hooks up to a computer and transfers the data

every new driver should have to have one attached to the car theyre using (with an alert feature so it can be seen if the device was removed or tampered with) and they should then be required to hand the device in once a month to the dept of transport, that way it can be seen who is a rsponsible driver or not, irresponsible drivers would have their license taken from them with a 6 month period before they can go for it again

thats my idea, it has flaws but its a work in progress

ratchet · Jul 11, 2008 7:05 AM

the problem with your idea of abolishing school altogether is this

Actually, i'm not saying that at all, just that the government needs to really revise the system

Fletch_Talon · Jul 11, 2008 7:15 AM

ratchet wrote:

the problem with your idea of abolishing school altogether is this
Actually, i'm not saying that at all, just that the government needs to really revise the system

Actually, if it were up to me, i'd make School optional, and make a system where its much easier for an uneducated person to take a cource and get a job!

ok so no not technically abolishing it, but my points still stand as is, if school was optional, how many people do you think would really go?

actually a heck of a lot most likely since the students would still be dependant on their parents therefore the parents would be the ones deciding whether their child goes to school or not, i cant imagine many parents not sending their kids to school

ratchet · Jul 11, 2008 10:49 AM

ofcource I'd make the first few years (K-4) compolsory and then there'd be many branches.
But K to 4 would be different anyway.

Fletch_Talon · Jul 11, 2008 11:03 AM

well my opinion on the matter is that you shouldnt fix whats not broken, the education system isnt flawless, but nothing in this world is, and despite the lack of funding for any school which isnt private (so pretty much any school that isnt named after a saint or referred to as a christian/catholic college) the system works, at least it does if youre willing to put in the effort

and just regarding something you said earlier, about how reading shouldnt be forced because its recretional, you could say the same about physical education (sports), creative writing, arts, and other subjects, the problem is they arent teaching you to read recreationally, theyre teaching you to read critically, just like sports are teaching you sportsmanship and teamwork and art/creative writing is teaching you to explore creativity and how to express yourself in ways besides speaking/body language

might i also add that i know people, not a huge amount, but probably the average number of people that a 19 yr old would generally know, and i cant think of anyone who would say that their years in school were a waste of time, hard maybe? boring/annoying/depressing? maybe, but thats not generally the schools fault, more often than not its the students who dont want to be there and take it out on the people around them

LoneKnight · Jul 11, 2008 4:57 PM

The Education and Driving Systems aren't flawless, but they are the best they've ever been.

Doppelgangergang · Jul 11, 2008 8:58 PM

Fletch_Talon wrote:

there is a device thats been created that attaches to the car and monitors speed/breaking/etc. it then hooks up to a computer and transfers the data
every new driver should have to have one attached to the car theyre using (with an alert feature so it can be seen if the device was removed or tampered with) and they should then be required to hand the device in once a month to the dept of transport, that way it can be seen who is a rsponsible driver or not, irresponsible drivers would have their license taken from them with a 6 month period before they can go for it again
thats my idea, it has flaws but its a work in progress

That's a good idea. A fair trial, as they call it.

P.S: It's called a Car Chip.

bmah · Jul 11, 2008 9:08 PM

New question.

Should the death penalty in the US be kept, or should it be removed altogether? Give justifications as to why it should or should not remain a part of US law.

Doppelgangergang · Jul 11, 2008 9:23 PM

The death penalty could be applied to the wrongfully accused.

pur · Jul 11, 2008 9:28 PM

Fletch_Talon wrote:

i
without these grade the population would be illiterate and not understand how to get the price of 5 lollipops at 80 cents each... unless they add 80 to itself 5 times... so who needs multiplication

Well, that is what multiplication and division are - another form of addition and subtraction.

You see, before calculator were around in England, students had log books to work out sums, instead. The thing is that the log books were only comprised of addition and subtraction, and students were expected to use them for complex multiplication and division. Then again, since M+D=A+S, they could do just that, and with relative ease. With calculators, the relation between M+D and A+S has been mostly forgotten.

Oh, was there a debate? Apologies. Let's see...*looks at debate* Are you out of your flippin' mind?!? Make childhood education OPTIONAL?!?! Do you KNOW how big a negative impact that would have on society? It would be in ruins.

Fletch_Talon · Jul 12, 2008 3:47 AM

pur wrote:

Fletch_Talon wrote:
i
without these grade the population would be illiterate and not understand how to get the price of 5 lollipops at 80 cents each... unless they add 80 to itself 5 times... so who needs multiplication
Well, that is what multiplication and division are - another form of addition and subtraction.

i know that i just meant that there are easier ways of doing it ie.

80 x 5
instead of doing
80+80+80+80+80

i know the answer is the same, but (if i could put it in the right format) the first example can be worked out more quickly as long as you can quickly recall what 8 x 5 is
however i must admit a lot of this stuff is becoming obsolete now that calculators and computers do most of our work for us

as for the death sentence, it should obviously be reserved for only the most severe crimes and only when the evidence is undisputable, in other words there is absolutely no way that the evidence can be explained

in a perfect world (god it feels like i say that a lot) we could give life in prison to every severe crime, but then prisons would be way too crowded, and as it is we have to pay taxes, some of which go towards feeding the scum of society

ooh i just had an idea, we could have a prisoner transfer system, where we trade murderers/rapists/paedophiles for refugees from other countries, we wouldnt have to worry about feeding the criminals, and we wouldnt need to worry about overpopulation due to the refugees and immigrants

ratchet · Jul 12, 2008 4:32 AM

Are you out of your flippin' mind?!? Make childhood education OPTIONAL?!?! Do you KNOW how big a negative impact that would have on society? It would be in ruins.

How do you know?
Maybe we should make the first few years compolsory and then from there its optional. I think starvation would be a good enough reason for people to take jobs. Remember, 1000 years ago, the only real problem with everything was human rights and communism, not to mention that we really havn't taken any chances with the education system since the end of world war 2.
Hell, if i had started taking a couce for making games when i wanted too, i would be in buisness right now!

Should the death penalty in the US be kept, or should it be removed altogether? Give justifications as to why it should or should not remain a part of US law.

Well i believe that only the worst of the worst should get the death penalty, and there should be strong evidence against someone getting the death penalty before it happens, otherwise the worst punishment would be life inprisonment. But i believe that everyone shoukd get a second chance, humans are naturally agressive creatures and killing someone might of just came by nature. I would only consider something liike life inprisonment if the person who killed another feels happy for doing so, and feels no guilt, because they are obviously killers. serial killers should get a psyciactric or whatever evaluation before considering such crimes as the death penalty and should be locked up in a psyco prison until they get there results (for the psyc test) and their treatment, if there is many.
if they are really psyco, they should stay in the psyc hospital until there symptons turn around or if they're not, then lets consider such punishments as the death penalty.
If someone kills and feels really guilty about it, and shows it, then there will be less or none at all jail time, if someone did kill my father and got off, i might change my mind then, but that it probably only due to my natural feelings which would void my judgement

Fletch_Talon · Jul 12, 2008 5:20 AM

ratchet wrote:

Hell, if i had started taking a couce for making games when i wanted too, i would be in buisness right now!

no you wouldnt because

1. as said before you are not permitted to work until you are at least 15 (unless this has changed recently)

2. just because you feel you would be good at designing games doesnt mean you have what it takes to do well in the industry

3. if every pre teen was able to pick their job and start training for it before theyve even gotten to highschool, there would be a hell of a lot of game designers, policemen, firemen etc. and very few engineers, politicians, and other similar jobs which dont seem as fun at age 12

4. proper game design i would imagine would require a fair bit more than a grade 8 completion of mathematics, i recall a couple of years ago you had to at least complete Maths B (the lowest form being maths A, and highest maths C) with a Low achievement to get into the course for game design, now a low achievement doesnt sound like much, but maths b is a very complex subject, and it wouldnt surprise me if the requirements have gone up since then

thats another purpose the current education system serves, its there to guide you, give you an idea of what jobs are out there and the kind of skills they require. if you arent doing too well in (for example) maths then game design, engineering, being a pilot are not really in your future

Spyro_Loves_Me · Jul 12, 2008 5:47 AM

Oooh, let's do number 3! I would love to see the salary of those tougher jobs shoot up. I might be getting into engineering. :-P

The education system doesn't really serve as a good guideline though. It's ok in some cases, but not many. I doubt I'll be doing the quadratic formula while I'm flying a plane.
One thing I don't like about the system is that I don't think it's preping us for college enough. We're being spoon-fed too much.

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